1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus which captures and records still and moving images.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital cameras and digital video cameras have been widely used, which capture still and moving images by using image sensing devices such as CCD sensors and CMOS sensors.
Such an apparatus records captured images as digital data files (captured image files) on a storage medium such as a compact flash memory card.
Many of these image processing apparatuses comprise interfaces for connection to external apparatuses, and can record images received from a connection partner as well as captured images as digital data files.
In general, such apparatuses record image files captured in this manner by using a file system (folder structure) using folders (directories). There is known a proposed technique of classifying captured image files by using folders and performing subsequent search operations (e.g., Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-54041).
The technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-54041 is at best a technique associated with storage management of images captured by the user himself/herself. As described above, many currently available digital cameras can communicate with external apparatuses, and obviously can receive and store image data from external apparatuses (PCs, other digital cameras, and the like). When a digital camera stores images transferred from an external apparatus in this manner, the received images mix with the images captured by the user himself/herself in one storage medium. This makes it impossible for the user to determine which images are those received and which images are those captured by himself/herself.